


the floors of silent seas

by cosmoscorpse



Series: ulysses [1]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Mild description of injuries, Slowest Burn, The Wasteland Has Coffee, if you came here for kissing I Am Sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-18
Updated: 2016-07-18
Packaged: 2018-07-24 17:28:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7516963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmoscorpse/pseuds/cosmoscorpse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the battle of Bunker Hill and the subsequent burning of her cover in the Institute, agent codenamed Fixer knows exactly what it is that she needs to do. That doesn't mean that she wants to do it, so she runs, and Deacon follows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the floors of silent seas

**Author's Note:**

> There will be time, there will be time  
> To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;  
> There will be time to murder and create,  
> And time for all the works and days of hands  
> That lift and drop a question on your plate;  
> Time for you and time for me,  
> And time yet for a hundred indecisions,  
> And for a hundred visions and revisions,
> 
> […]
> 
> I should have been a pair of ragged claws  
> Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
> 
> \-- the lovesong of j. alfred prufrock; t.s. eliot

a.

“You ever think of cutting your hair?” he asks her while she’s lounging in the sun on the pier in Nahant. It’s one of the first days of summer, and it’s been a long day, the setting sun sending spears of orange-gold light through the clouds. Her hair’s dark as black coffee, long and tangled by the sea breeze. She smiles, swinging her legs.

“What,” she says, “You want us to be matching baldie buddies?”

He sniffs, turning his face away from her. He can feel her grinning in his general direction. And at his expense, too. To think he ever thought them friends.

“Oh, wow,” he says, and can’t help the small chuckle that escapes him, “Here I am, asking a simple, honest question in the interest of simple, honest journalistic integrity, and here you are. Making it personal. Thanks, bud.”

She laughs, bright and clear as a bell. He chances a glance at her. The picture of happiness. She could be a travel advertisement – visit Sunny Nahant, now cleared of Mirelurks, courtesy of your neighborhood Minutemen. Her grin’s infectious. “This is serious business,” he says while she giggles, “You’re being hurtful.”

“I’m sure,” she says, her laughter dying down. She lowers herself down to the planks, laying on her back and looking up at the sky. Less orange now, and turning pink. “I’m not cutting my hair.”

She closes her eyes. The breeze comes up off the water, tugs at the both of them. Deacon finishes the last of his Nuka Cherry, and chucks the bottle into the ocean. Makes it a good thirty, forty feet. She cheers.

 

 

 

i.

HQ is humming with vicious noise when he finally drags himself there, his heart hammering in his chest. Desdemona’s leaning on her table, knuckles gripping the edge so tightly they turn white, blue. He can’t breathe. She’s smoking a cigarette that’s mostly ash, held tight between her anxious lips.

He’s been running almost all day, the runner got to the Slog just before dawn, and he’s still late, late, late. Always late. Fixer’s nowhere to be seen, and Carrington’s rolling bandages even more aggressively than he normally does. Glory’s gone. Tinker paces by his terminal, worrying his thumb between his teeth. Drummer sits against the wall, his face pale, methodically taking apart and rebuilding his 10mm.

“Where?” he asks, and how is his voice not shaking? How does he still sound calm? Desdemona pinches her cigarette between her forefinger and thumb, breathes out great clouds of smoke and holds it out to him. Her hand is shaking, ash falling onto the map. She doesn’t say anything. “Des, where is she?”

Desdemona’s eyes are like ice. Stone. Abandon all hope ye who enter here. God. God. He takes the cigarette from her, breathes it down to the filter, and she pulls out another one. He’s about to provide a lighter for her – habit, muscle memory – when she produces one out of her own pocket and he remembers that only Fixer ever bums lights off of him.

Des shakes her head. Deacon’s going to scream – he can’t _breathe._ When she speaks, it’s around the cigarette in her mouth. She says, “Bunker Hill, with the rest of our heavies. The _Institute_ ,” she spits the word, Deacon goes numb, “They found us out. We’ve got four synths there, and they’ve dispatched a Courser to retrieve them.”

“ _Jesus_ ,” Deacon swears, leaning his full weight against the war table. He can’t breathe.

“Yes,” Desdemona agrees, then hesitates. “She’ll be fine, Deacon. She’s more than capable of handling herself.”

And, yes, of course she will.

But –

“Go,” Desdemona says, “Provide assistance, if needed.”

He still worries.

He nods.

Drummer catches him on his way out, says that he should bring extra stimpaks, and then he presses three of them into his open palm. His hands are trembling minutely.

Drummer glances at him, his mouth pressed into a thin line. Deacon is terrified that he’ll notice, comment on it ( _compromised, you’re compromised, better stay here where you can’t do any harm_ ) and so he forces a chuckle, claps the kid on the shoulder. He says something like, “One too many Nuka Colas, huh?” Tries to play it off.

Drummer only blinks.

He says, “She looked bad. Bring her back.”

 

 

 

b.

“Are deathclaws real?”

The boy’s sitting in the front row. He’s got hair that’s as red as a Commonwealth sunset, brighter and lighter than Deacon’s would be, if he let it grow out.

 “Yes, I’ve fought a few,” Edith says softly. She’s killed a couple, and Deacon’s been around for more than a few. The kids blink, and the teacher smiles, and they wait for her to go on. She doesn’t.

They’re not kid friendly stories. They’re still waiting, though, and she’s frozen.

Deacon pushes off from the wall, goes to stand next to her. Their shoulders brush and she flinches. He murmurs, “Embellish a little. They’ll love it.”

So she shakes herself, and Deacon goes to lean against the wall behind her, watches her grin fierce as anything.

“I _did_ fight one,” she says, “Fresh out of my vault, too. It was a miracle I found some power armor, or I’d have been in deep trouble.”

There’s a small chorus of awe from the kids. Edith’s animated in a way Deacon hasn’t seen for months, her eyes lit up and her hands weaving the story, plucking it from the air. She goes on to tell the kids about Preston Garvey and the bravery of the last of the Minutemen, about ripping the minigun from the downed vertibird, and then about facing the beast itself.

She’s doing well right up until she tells them how the deathclaw got her onto her back, had her pinned in a suit that was fresh out of juice. It set about peeling her open like a tin can, but she doesn’t tell the kids this. She goes quiet instead, and grips the edge of the desk so hard her knuckles turn white.

“What happened then?” they ask. The words get caught up and tangled in her throat. She can’t say, _then I killed it and wasn’t afraid_ , because that’d be lying, and she can’t say _then it hurt me, badly, and I survived to fight another one that hurt me, badly, and another, and another, and I still have the scars and they still ache when the weather turns_ , because that’d be truth. Deacon’s eyes are caught on the shine of her leg brace.

“Then you killed it, right?” Austin asks, and a muscle in her jaw ticks.

Deacon steps forward, rest his fingers on her elbow, and nods expansively. “You’re darned right she did. I saw it myself,” the kids gasp, and Eddie glances at him, her eyes narrowing. “She put it down with three bullets from her pistol. Three! One for each eye and then one in the forehead.”

She snorts and rolls her eyes. Deacon just grins wider. _Keep it together_ , he prays, and slowly her knuckles loosen on the desk’s edge.

“What about the minigun?” says a girl three seats to Austin’s left.

“It was out of bullets,” Edith says, voice nothing like it was minutes ago. Storytime’s over.

 

 

 

 

ii.

He’s late again. Bunker Hill is a ruin when he gets to it, Brotherhood corpses and Synth corpses and the corpses of nondescript men and woman who he _knows_ are their own people. Kessler’s standing in the middle of it, her eyes vacant and her hands bloody as she directs the removal of the bodies. She sees Deacon come up through the side entrance and he sees her legs tremble with her full-body shudder.

Gut reaction. Deacon doesn’t blame her.

“You,” she says, and Deacon adjusts his grip on his rifle.

“Me,” he agrees easily, smiling past his fear. He can’t see Fixer, can’t see _Edith_ anywhere, but maybe that’s a good thing. No familiar curve of a shoulder in a pile of bodies, “What’s the damage?”

She casts her eyes up. “Godawful, but not as awful as it could have been, if you can believe it. I never thought I’d be glad to see these Brotherhood bastards, but they kept the chrome-domes occupied.”

He’s curious how the Brotherhood knew to show up. It’s unlikely they arrived by plain coincidence, and normally he’d throw himself into investigating but – there’s not time. Not today. He files the information away.

He nods, swallows carefully. “Still lost a few people, though,” he says, and it’s not a question. Of course it’s not a fucking question. Kessler’s shoulders shake with a black laughter.

“Yeah,” she says, “Yeah, we did, and that’s the understatement of the _goddamn_ century. None of your _packages_ , though. Can I borrow a smoke?”

He obliges, his fingers shaking more than he’d like. _Where is she?_ Battle’s been over for an hour, at least, if not longer. It must have been a quick fight, if messy. She should be here. Kessler continues.

“You friend,” she starts, and gestures to her own face. Deacon can guess what she’s referring to, “Patches. She helped. I saw her shoot that _goddamn_ courser before it could get through our gates. She saved lives, I’m sure. Dropped it in two shots.”

His mouth is dry. His fingers twitch, impatient, and he almost snaps before stopping himself, smiling sickly sweet while Kessler smokes. _Patches,_ hah. Fixer’ll get a kick out of that one. He’s just gotta find her first. “I’m sure that was a sight,” he says, his voice careful slow, “Is she downstairs?”

Kessler looks at him like he’s grown a second head. “She ain’t here. Rabbited off west a while ago.”

He swallows. “Of course,” he says, and he’s not surprised. At least she’s alive, he thinks, thank god for that, but anxiety still curls in his gut, heavy as stones. She’s not here. He turns his gaze back to the gates and the city waiting beyond. He catches Kessler running a tired hand over the back of her neck out of the corner of his eye. She shifts, and he bites down on his tongue.

“We could use help, as long as you’re here,” she says, her voice a quiet mumble. “There’s wounded, and Kay dislocated her shoulder – she needs as many steady pairs of hands as she can get. Think yours will do?”

Deacon holds out his hand, palm down, and marvels at how little it trembles. He shrugs and Kessler holds her hand out next to his, her fingers shaking worse even than his own. “It’s been a long day,” she says.

Deacon sighs through his teeth, casts his gaze again to the city skyline. “That it has,” he says, and slides the strap of his rifle over his shoulder. “My – my friend, when she left. Did she say where she was going?”

Kessler shakes her head, her mouth pressed into a thin line. She says, “No.”

“Was she hurt?” Deacon asks, because he’s a glutton for punishment, and, well. It’ll give him an idea of what to expect if he finds her. _When_ he finds her.

Kessler shakes her head again, a line creasing between her eyebrows. Her cigarette is nearly burned to nothing but ash, the cherry of it still hot red. He carefully arranges his expression into one of neutrality, and Kessler says, “No, I’m sorry. I don’t know if she was.”

He forces himself to smile, and he doesn’t need a mirror to know it’s worse than a half-hearted attempt, more of a grimace than anything else. “It’s fine,” he says, and Kessler snorts.

“Yeah, well,” she says, and then gestures halfheartedly towards the market building. “Kay’s through there. One of your people got scuffed up pretty bad – might be you could help with that, first.”

“Sure,” Deacon says, honestly glad for the direction, and by then Kessler’s already moved away, her cigarette thrown down on the ground. She’d halfheartedly ground it out but the tip of it is still glowing, so Deacon leans down and snuffs it out.

 

 

 

iii.

Kay’s sewing up an ugly looking tear in a young man’s side one handed and she barely looks up when Deacon comes to stand awkwardly near her. There’s injured laying everywhere there’s free space in the market – groaning and crying. It smells like wounds and gunpowder and antiseptic, and his stomach turns. She glances at him quickly and then jerks her chin to a mat across the room and the girl laying on it, her leg at an odd angle and her hand pressed tight to a bleeding wound on her thigh.

“Good to see you,” Kay says, and pulls the needle through the young man’s skin, “Go put pressure on that for her, I’ll be over to set the leg in just a moment.”

The girl glances up at him when he comes over, nodding minutely when his hands hover over the wound. She mutters something – he can’t hear what – and hands him a towel.

“With this, please,” she says, and thunks her head back against the wall. Deacon moves her hand and presses down on her leg, feels warm blood start to spot through the bandage. The girl hisses, a line creasing between her brows.

“Sorry,” Deacon says, averting his eyes. The girl laughs.

“What for? You didn’t do this,” she shifts, and makes a tiny choked noise. They’re silent for a long while, listening to the fires crackling outside the building, the sound of a man humming while he comforts a woman while they pull bullet shrapnel out of her gut. The girl continues speaking, quieter. She says, “If anything I think I should be the one apologizing.”

He blinks. “Now, why would you say that?” he asks, and chances a glance at her face, and he’s surprised a little at how young she looks. No more than twenty, he thinks. She smiles weakly, flashing blinding white teeth. Healthy, too. A hunted edge to the lines of her face.

His stomach sinks.

“I’m B2-57,” she says. Deacon tilts his head, masking his reaction because, really, it makes sense. She’s too _clean_ , too new and unscarred to be a caravanner or an agent. He hadn’t met any of the runaways personally, this batch. She should have been safe, away from the firefight. She swallows, her hands twitching anxiously at her sides, “But I think I’d like to be called Favor?”

“Favor, huh,” he pushes his concerns to the side, spends a second mulling over her choice of name. “Why’d you choose that?”

“’Fortune favors the brave,’” she says, “I want to be brave, but it’s hard, and so I need to remind myself.”

“Yeah,” he says, “I hear you.”

They lapse into silence.

Across the room Kay finishes with her stitches and comes to kneel next to her. Deacon sits back and lets her do her work. Favor barely flinches, even when Kay sews the ragged edges of skin back together, even as she drags the bones in her legs back into place.

Deacon swallows, turns his face away. She shouldn’t have been hurt.

When Kay finished, moving on to the next of the wounded with barely a goodbye, Deacon stays with the girl. She’s got a fever burning, now that the shock’s passed, and he covers her with cool rags.

He speaks slowly, haltingly. Isn’t good with emotions, especially with strangers, but he’s always liked the synths they’ve freed, and he can’t stand to see her upset.

He says, “Listen – the Institute, the Brotherhood – even if you weren’t here, they’d have found a reason to fight. Maybe not _here_ , but somewhere. It’s all they know. You can’t -”

“I shouldn’t blame myself,” she finishes for him, staring up at the ceiling. She smiles again, “I know. But it’s hard.”

 

 

 

c.

A week on the road with her, and two after Switchboard, and he’s on second watch when he notices a hitch in her slow, sleeping breathing. There’s a crease between her eyebrows, her arm wedged firmly under her torso. She’s twitching, making little panic noises in her throat. It goes on like that for a minute more before she settles back into an easy sleep.

The cycle repeats itself.

Deacon turns his eyes away. It’s three hours to dawn, and waking her will only take sleep that she needs away from her.

Everyone has their demons, he thinks. Maybe she’s got more than others, well. From what he’s seen, that might be her own fault. He won’t wake her.

When she jerks awake an hour before dawn, dragging in breath like it won’t come quick enough he’s smokes quietly on the camp’s perimeter, watching the sun rise. He asks, “How’d you sleep?” like a good, considerate mercenary-for-hire.

She’s got dark circles under her eyes, her lower lip raw and red from where she bit it. “Fine,” she bites out. She doesn’t speak for the rest of the morning.

 

 

 

iv.

He drags himself into Goodneighbor a few hours before daybreak, when it becomes clear that the exhaustion dragging on his limbs isn’t going to go away on will alone. Lights are dancing in the corners of his vision, and he can’t remember the last time he slept. A full day before the runner stumbled, gasping, into the Slog’s bunkhouse, so three days, he thinks. Probably. Maybe four.

Anyway. He stands swaying just inside the gate, his jaw aching where he’s clenching it, his fingers twitching anxiously. He needs to rest – he’s not so proud as to refuse to admit that – but he weighs his options. There’s the drifter shack at the end of the square, where he’s liable to lose his earthly possessions, and there’s the Rexford, where the doors lock, but it’ll fleece him for caps.

There’s Daisy, too. He’s not going to get robbed if he goes to her and bless her heart, she won’t charge him a thing. The upshot, beyond that, is if Edith came this way Daisy’d know about it. The bitch of _that_ is that he’d have to talk to Daisy about it, and endure her questions and her _caring_ and her seeing right through the walls he prides himself on. He’s too tired to lie to her, for once, and that thought sends curls of faint panic through his gut. His fingers twitch at his side, and he swallows.

He needs to move.

He steps forward, swaying dangerously, and blinks the lights out of his eyes. His stomach turns, his tongue feels thick in his mouth. His brain is static, at this point, things like _was she here? How long ago? For how long?_ rising up above the din. He takes another step – more of a stumble, really, and decides he needs a wall to lean on, especially if he’s going to the Rexford. He’s going to the Rexford – privacy is what he needs, and he can always get more caps, one way or another.

Sticky fingers, him. He hears someone laughing, and is almost positive it’s in his head. Sounds too much like Edith to be anything but. He walks.

He gets to the wall of the State House before a voice cuts through the fog.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Daisy rasps from her shopfront, squinting dangerously at him. He winces, ducks his head, but it’s too late to run. That’d be rude. He doesn’t know if he has the energy for it, besides. Instead he settles for a half-hearted smile.

“Hi, Daisy,” he says, blinking a little in surprise at how wrecked his voice is.

“Been a while since you’ve dragged your sorry hide here, boy,” she says, an undercurrent of fondness in her voice. Deacon leans his head against the bricks of the State House. _Been busy,_ he wants to say, _you know. no rest for the wicked_. His throat works, no sound comes out. He’s dead on his feet and it’s a miracle he’s made it this far. He blinks, the world gives a sickening dip, and then when he opens his eyes again Daisy is at his side, short and wiry, a gentle hand on his elbow, another pressed to his forehead.

She makes an unhappy sound. “Come’ere,” she says, dragging him back to her shop. He blinks again, and she’s pushing him at the stairs in the back. He’s further gone than he’d thought, and he sinks gratefully onto the steps. She starts rummaging around in the cabinets next to her stove. She hums, asks, “You hurt?”

Deacon swallows, looks at his fingers. They’re shaking just enough to be noticeable. “No,” he says. At least not beyond some scuffed elbows and knees. Daisy chuckles, and sets a saucepan on her stove, kindling a flame underneath it.

“That’s a first,” she mutters, turning the handle of the pan. She snags something off the shelf, brings it to him and shoves it into his hands. He’s grateful for something to hold on to, even if it’s just a can of purified. “Drink that. Swear to god, you kids know next to nothing about takin’ care of yourselves.”

“Sorry,” he says, fumbling in his pocket for a spare blade to puncture the top of the can. The water’s blessedly cool down his throat. He closes his eyes, and Daisy hums, and when he opens them again she’s back at the stove, watching him out of the corner of her eye.

“So,” she says, opening another can of water and pouring it into the pan. “So. Would I be right in assuming you were part of that mess at the Hill?”

Deacon’s throat tightens up – he can’t breathe. They’d just started the pyres down on the docks when he’d ghosted out, and he can still smell it. The fires will burn all through the day, and the smoke will blow all the way to Diamond City if the winds are right, but it looks like it’ll be a solidly misty morning. He forces himself to smile. Daisy is still watching him from the corner of her eye. He can still smell it in his clothes, and he’s got blood under his fingernails still, and –

_It was like -_

So, he grins, says, “Who, me? Nah, I’ve been up at the Slog all week – the things those ghouls can do with a tarberry facial would make a mutie cry, you know.”

His voice breaks. Daisy’s face twitches, the remains of her eyebrow quirking upward. She reaches to a shelf above the stove and grabs a tin, shakes a handful of dark, sweet leaves into the palm of her hand before casting them into the boiling water. “That bad, huh?” she asks. Deacon presses his lips together, rolls the can of purified between his hands. The water sloshes, and he looks at the cracks in the wall.

“I was just there for cleanup,” he says. The aroma of the tea fills the room, and he is so tired. “I missed the party.” Not quite a lie of omission.

She tilts her head. “Probably a good thing,” she says, voice measured and even. Slow. Deacon leans his head against the wall. “You lookin’ for your girl, then?”

He closes his eyes, nods. “I don’t know if she wants to be found,” he mumbles. No note, no clues. She’s been silent for days. Daisy snorts.

“You’re both full of the same bullshit,” she hisses, stirring the leaves in the saucepan. “She came through here a day ago. Wouldn’t buy any stimpaks from me, the little idiot. I slipped one into her bag anyway.”

Deacon swallows and doesn’t say anything, but a part of his heart gets lodged in his throat. A day ago she was here. A part of him wants to get up right now, run after her on his dead limbs.

“I don’t know where she planned on going,” he says, voice a bare whisper. “She didn’t leave anything for me to follow.”

“You’d think a girl like that would carry more medical supplies,” Daisy grouses, studiously ignoring him, “What with her line of work. But _no_ , she ain’t got room for any blessed stimpaks, not with all those oil cans and bullets and god knows what it is that she carries around.”

Deacon hums, then he freezes.

Oil and gunpowder. _Oh_ , he’s an idiot.

 

 

 

d.

“Keep an eye out for railsigns,” he says, all that time ago on the overpass, pointing at the white symbol painted on the side of the bus. The woman standing next to him, favoring one leg over the other, is a massive unknown, even with the intel he’d so studiously gathered on her. She tilts her head to the side, the gears on her braced leg clicking softly as she shifts.

She’s quiet for a moment before she says, “Is this really how you communicate with each other?”

Deacon turns to her, crossing his arms over his chest. He came up with the railsigns himself – he’s a little bit biased in their favor. “Yeah, why?” he asks, and if there’s a note of defensiveness creeping into his voice, well. That’s between him and – just him, actually.

“White paint, really?” she asks, her nose scrunching up. “How obvious can you be?”

 

 

 

She _refuses_ to use the white paint. She makes her railsigns in a paint made from ash and oil and gunpowder, and she hides them in shadows. The tourists have an absolute goddamn _field_ _day_ , trying to find her caches.

 

 

 

v.

He finds the first one inside a car door a block south of Cabot House, the next three blocks west on the doorframe of an old bookstore.

He finds the last one on an old board propped against a fire escape near dusk, a very circuitous two blocks away from Goodneighbor’s gates. When he looks up there’s a slight glow from the building’s top east facing windows, and he thinks he might see the quick flash-shine of a rifle scope, so he starts to climb, pulling the ladder up after himself. He’s very, very careful to not look down, to not pay attention to the creaking of the old steel, the low groaning of the wind through the streets.

It’s quiet, except for that. He makes it up the six flights without hearing anything but the wind and his own footsteps, and he’s staring through a hole in the wall into a ruined pre-war apartment, thinking he’s lost his mind, before he sees the tripwire across the opening. The rifle bolted up near the ceiling, pointed at his chest and rigged to go off.

And then, muffled:

“If you disarm that tripwire I’ll shoot you my own damn self.”

Deacon’s knees go weak and he has to prop himself against the crumbling wall for a moment, relief flooding his veins, the tension of several days sliding out of his body. He swallows past the lump in his throat, and steps carefully over the tripwire and into the shade of the building, avoiding the rifle aimed at the hole in the wall.

“Got it,” he calls, slinging his rifle over his back. “Where are you?”

“In here,” she says, and he follows the sound of her voice deeper into the apartment.

She’s sitting on a bed, her back turned to the open door, dark hair pulled over her shoulder and held awkwardly in one hand. She shifts, turns toward him slightly, and raises an eyebrow. She’s got a scrape over her cheekbone and awful bruises under her eyes, but the worst that he can see is the vicious looking laser burn on the side of her neck. Exposed, the singed edges of skin alternating between red and pink and black. She’s got bandages around her ribs too. Blood spotting through the white cotton.

But she’s alive. She’s alive, _alive_ , and Deacon stands in the doorway, feeling like he’s going to collapse. He swallows, and she clears her throat.

“Can you help me with my hair?” she asks. “I can’t get my right arm up high enough, and I haven’t been able to manage it with one hand.”

Deacon swallows again and forces himself to move, crossing the room to her side. He hesitates a moment before taking her hair from her, keeping his fingers gentle as he twists it up and away from the burn on her neck. She hands him a length of ribbon, and he ties it in place, but then he’s sitting next to her and he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. He ghosts his fingers gently over the burn on her neck.

“How did this happen?” he asks. She blinks slowly, breathes slowly, and for a while he doesn’t know if she’s going to answer.

“A synth strider,” she says finally, “On the CIT roof. I wasn’t watching for it, and.”

She shrugs, raising one hand and waving it through the air before letting it fall back to the blankets.

“Have you used a stimpak?” he asks. She bites her lip, nods. Keeps her eyes downcast and turned away from him.

“Yes, it’s just slow going. I don’t want to stitch it.”

He hums, nods even though she can’t see it. She drags in a deep breath, says, “I expected you to come sooner.”

He draws his hand away from her neck - she seems to relax fractionally. It hurts. She’s got a tension in her shoulders, in the curve of her spine and the line of her jaw. She’s hurting beyond her wounds, he knows her well enough to know that, but he can’t _read_ her. She’s turned away from him, she’s faceless, and the air in the room is choking him.

Something’s happened.

“I’m sorry,” he says. She sighs, and something bleeds out of the room.

“Did Desdemona send you?” she asks in a wooden voice. Lifeless. “I’d imagine she wants a report.”

“No, Dez didn’t -” he starts to say, and it’s only half a lie, even, but she keeps talking right over him in that monotone.

“I killed the courser that the Institute dispatched before he even got through the gates, however, as he’d already called in reinforcements, there was already a significant firefight going on when I joined the heavies already at the Hill. Somehow the Brotherhood of Steel heard about the situation as well. There were casualties, but I managed to secure the safety of the four synths in our care,” she pauses, takes a deep breath, and Deacon takes the moment to interrupt her.

He says, “Edith, Dez didn’t send me here.”

He thinks, _what aren’t you telling me? What are you hiding?_

_What happened?_

The fingers of her left hand twitch, latch onto the blankets. Her knuckles turn white from the force of her grip. “I’ve failed,” she says, “I couldn’t, um. Shaun - _Father_ \- has exiled me from the Institute. My cover’s burned.”

 

“Okay,” he says, “Okay.”

 

 

vi.

It’s not ideal.

He knows that – he’s not blind to it. But Edith’s his friend, his _partner_ , before she’s an agent, and he. She needs. He needs to take care of _her_ , first. Before they figure out anything else.

“Have you eaten anything?” he asks her once he’s dragged her out of the stiflingly small bedroom and into the main room of the apartment. She sits at the table and stares down at the street through the window, her hands resting on the table, palms up. She blinks. “Edith. When was the last time you ate?”

She blinks again, turns her head and seems to see him for the first time. She swallows, lifting her chin up. He helped her bandage her throat - the cloth is stark white in the fading light. He’ll light a candle. “Before the Hill,” she says, her voice a low rasping, “So, maybe two days ago?”

It’s three, but he’s not going to tell her that. Instead he moves to the stove she’s cobbled together in the corner and he kindles a flame in it. Eddie keeps talking.

“It’s been hard to swallow,” she says, and when he looks her fingers are ghosting on the bandages. His hands itch to stop her from poking at it - the wound won’t heal if she doesn’t leave it alone and the risk of infection is high enough as it is. He keeps himself busy at the stove. Feels positively goddamn domestic. God bless Daisy for shoving rations into the bottom of his pack when he wasn’t looking.

“What are you doing?” she asks, “Deacon, I’m not hungry.”

He snorts. “What?” he asks, “You think this is for you? Nah, this is for me, sugar. I’m starved. But, hey, now that you mention it, you should probably eat some of it too.”

“Deacon,” she sighs. He grins broadly.

“It’ll help get your strength back up!” he says, forcing his voice to remain bright. He unwraps the food Daisy gave him - mostly dried meats, easy to rehydrate and reheat. Something to crumble up and boil, razorgrain oats added to thicken it. A canteen of her tea, too, spiked with whiskey if he trusts what his nose is telling him.

“I’m not going back to HQ,” she blurts. He blinks, turns to look at her. Her eyes are fixed out the window again, empty. Something twists in his chest. “I can’t.”

Things are silent between them, nothing but the hiss-snap of the stove. “Okay,” he says finally, “We won’t go back to HQ.”

She blinks slowly. The silence stretches thin.

“I wanted,” she swallows, drags in a shaking breath that Deacon can hear from across the room, “I wanted to _save_ them. All of them. I was-”

 _I was close_. Deacon can hear her saying it, forcing the words past the shredded column of her throat. Blood’s spotting the bandages. He wants to say, _you did the best you could_ , or _it’s enough, god, Edith, it’s enough_. He can’t.

“You,” he starts. Swallows. “You still can.”

Edith breathes in, breathes out again. She keeps breathing, and when she looks at him her eyes are flinty.

“I’m not done,” she says, her voice unwavering, “I sent all the intel I have on the Institute north to Sanctuary. It’s mostly encrypted, but that’s. That’s workable. There’ll be something there.”

Deacon doesn’t say anything, and so she keeps talking. “I follow it soon. But. Not yet.”

 

 

 

e.

“Shush,” she says, her eye on her scope, pointing down into the pit with the barrel of her rifle. “Look.”

He pauses in wiping the blood off his knife to go kneel next to her, peering down into the dim. The room was dark to begin with, and the smoke from the fires doesn’t do shit for visibility. He can’t see what she saw. She must sense it because she pulls away from her scope, offers it to him. She holds it steady while he raises his eye to it.

It takes him a minute to see it – the room’s still dark and the pit’s still mostly smoke-filled – and even then, it’s just a flash of dull scales. A ripple of a large body moving quietly, carefully. His stomach drops right down to his toes.

“That’s a deathclaw,” he whispers, rocking back on his heels. Edith makes a small hum of agreement, and he wonders why it took him so long to see the pearl white of the bones down at the bottom.

“Yeah,” she says, scooting firmly away from the edge of the pit. Her fingers reach out and snag his sleeve, briefly. He flinches, but shuffles back too. He’s getting used to the physical contact thing.

“That’s our way out,” he says once the small of his back firmly kisses the far wall, his legs stretched out in front of him. The way back up and out of the hospital is locked on the other side of the wall and he feels like an idiot for noticing that when the two of them first burst in here, and letting them get stuck on the wrong side of it anyway. He didn’t think there’d be a deathclaw guarding the exit like some twisted hound. He should have known better. Two feet away, Edith sets about quickly and quietly disassembling her rifle. She presses her lips together and raises a finger.

“It’s okay,” she says, “It’s just fine. We just retrace our steps, up and out. Easy.”

He stares at her, then stares at the locked door, then stares at the edge of the pit. “You’re kidding,” he says, flatly. He’s almost certain that she’s going to start reassembling her rifle any moment now, drop down into the den and gain herself another set of scars and another sick leg brace. He’s seen the scars from the first time, in Concord, she’d said. Thinking about them makes his blood run cold.

He doesn’t want his partner dead – he thinks. She sniffs, stands up. She pulls a discrete pistol from a discrete holster, checks the bullets in the chamber. Says, “Yeah, I am.”

 

 

vii.

He’s dozing in the armchair next to the bed when she wakes up choking, screaming, clawing at the bandages around her throat. Her eyes are wild, glassy, and there’s no recognition in them, not even when Deacon grabs her wrists to keep her fingers from gouging into her own throat.

This is a routine that Deacon knows too well, and despite the familiarity of it fear aches in his throat. Deacon’s nightmares leave him paralyzed, sweating; Edith’s leave her bloody. She’s got scars.

 _If she would just_ talk _about it_ , he thinks, pinning her down while she shakes. He’s a fucking hypocrite. She’s not awake yet, still caught on the fringes of the dream. “Easy,” he murmurs, muscle memory at this point. How many times on the road have they woken each other up? “Easy.”

She gulps down breath like she’s drowning. When she speaks it’s from a faraway place, and she says, “Where did he _put_ her?”

“Who?” Deacon asks, weariness dragging on him. Stones on his chest. A whole ocean hanging over them. He doesn’t expect an answer, not while she’s in this inbetween place.

All she does is shake.

 

 

viii.

He must fall asleep at some point, because when he opens his eyes next there’s pale sunlight streaming in through the windows and he’s got a crick in his neck from the way he’s curled up in the chair. There’s a quilt draped over his shoulders and his glasses are folded up on the table under the window. He squints at them, and then at the empty bed to his left.

He scrubs a hand over his eyes and snags the sunglasses. He stands up and folds the blanket, listening carefully for a break in the silence of the apartment. He’s rewarded by the muffled sound of soft cursing from the other room, and he follows the sound.

She’s sitting at the table with a mostly gutted radio in front of her. Dark, dark shadows under her eyes, but in her spare hand there’s a bit of radstag jerky, and Deacon’s just glad that she’s eating. Her eyes flick to him.

“Morning,” she mumbles, and her eyes return to the mess of parts in front of her. Her hand shakes, a little, as she fiddles with the wires. Deacon hums a response, leans against the wall. He knows from experience that she’ll want a little space after her episode last night. He won’t bring it up. “There’s coffee on the stove, if you want it.”

“You want me to pour you a cup?” he asks. She shakes her head, bites into the jerky. Tucks a stray strand of dark hair behind her ear. If she asks he’ll help her put it up again. He goes over to the stove and picks up the kettle - there’s less in it than he had expected.

“Nah, I already had a couple,” she says, crossing two wires, fiddling expectantly with the dial. Something fizzes, sparks, and she curses again, a long string of expletives.

“Getting creative, boss,” he says, because he’s never heard anyone string those words together, in that order, and this is a game they play, sometimes. Mostly when raiders are taking potshots at them. He’s rewarded by a slight uptick in the corner of her mouth. “What’s up with the radio?”

She works on splicing a new wire into an old one, beginning by fraying the tip. “A bad fuse, I think,” she says, a look of intense concentration on her face. She shrugs, “But the wiring’s bad too. Once I get it fixed I was going to sell it to Myrna, maybe.”

Deacon makes a face briefly. “Myrna, huh,” he deadpans. Her lip twitches again.

“Yeah, Myrna, who will pay a very _reasonable_ amount of caps for this,” she says. She feeds the wire into its slot and then leans back, rubbing idly at her wrist and then at her cheekbone. Her pip boy is on the opposite counter and he thinks that her wrist looks strangely delicate without the bulk of it.

She yawns, “What time is it?”

He peers outside, gauging the sun’s position over the streets, the length of the shadows of the buildings. He can see smoke rising in the northeast, and he swallows heavily. “Eight,” he says, nodding decisively, raising his mug to his lips.

He catches her staring out the window, her eyes glazed and fixed in the distance. He wants to ask her what she’s thinking. He doesn’t want to break the silence. He remembers her wild eyes and grasping hands and wonders how it was that he fell asleep, after that.

_Where did he put her?_

He watches her fingers twitch over her cheekbone, move to settle over the cotton of the bandages on her throat. He feels a stone settle in his gut.

_Who?_

She clears her throat and lowers her eyes. When she speaks again her voice is subdued, quiet. “Let’s see if this works,” she mumbles, and twists the dial on the radio.

There’s static. Edith blinks once, twice, and then a grin flits across her face. She looks up, eyes wide open.

“Bad fuse, right?” Deacon shrugs, hint of a grin playing on the corner of his mouth. He can feel it there, hopes to squash it down before he can make a fool of himself. She nods, and she’s fiddling with the dials now, the cobbled antenna. Pulling music out of the static. It’s not hard to tune into the one long-range station that plays music. She sits back, satisfied.

She’s happy, for a moment, before it slips away again, and he can’t figure out why, this time. It unsettles him. His coffee settles sour in his gut.

He swallows. “What is it?” he says, quiet enough that she can choose to not hear him if she wants. The music drifts out of the speakers, tinny, and she swallows, tilts her head back.

He looks at the radio, the lights flickering on the dial, and then at the set of her jaw. He blinks, asks, “Is it the music?”

She shrugs. She nods, too, just the tiniest dip of her head.

“I don’t know why they play the same songs over and over,” she says woodenly, “It’s not that I hate it, exactly - but I refuse to believe that only twelve different records survived the nuclear apocalypse.”

He watches her fingers tap on the table, slowly at first, then quicker and clearly in time with the beat. Her leg bounces a little, too. He tilts his head towards her. “The radio’s never riled you up this much before,” he says, and she glares at him. He forces his face into a grin, slow and easy, even with her unhappiness wearing a ragged hole in his chest.

He needs to make her smile again.

A plan seeds itself half formed in the back of his mind. It might even be a good one.

“Hey, c’mere,” he says, holding out his hand. She stares blankly at him, and so he stretches his grin wider, wiggles his fingers. The radio crackles in the background. A good song for dancing.

“What are you doing?” she asks, a note of confusion creeping into her voice. He’s probably imagining the smile playing at the corner of her mouth but he hopes he isn’t. She stands up and pushes in her chair at the table before moving to join him, limping slightly without her brace.

“ _We_ ,” he says, stressing the word, “Are dancing.”

She blinks, and no - he’s not imagining the smile on her face. It’s just small, but it’s there. She shakes her head. “Deacon,” she sighs.

“Come on!” he says, wiggling his fingers again until she slips her hand into his. “It’ll be fun.”

The music on the radio picks up, all guitars and bass and trumpet, and he leads her more into the center of the kitchen. He’s mindful of the bandages around her ribs and of her leg, but the stimpaks are doing their job and he’s not worried too much. She’s healing. That’s enough. He keeps the grin on his face, even as she protests.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” she asks, a little crease between her eyebrows. He barks out a laugh.

“What, you’re worried you can’t keep up with me? You’re right, 240 might be pushing it a little,” he drops his voice to conspiratory whisper, deliberately ribbing at her, “Just let me know if you need to take a breather.”

Her eyes light up and he’s rewarded by a shark-toothed grin blooming on her face. He takes that as a cue to start moving his feet, leading her through the motions. Laughter bubbles up between them. “Is that how this is going to be?” she asks, tossing the question over her shoulder as she spins out.

He nods, grabs her free hand when she spins back to him, and grins. “Yep,” he chirps, and she tosses her head back, laughs while they shimmy.

They’ve danced together before - mostly when they stop in at the Red Rocket on their way out of or into Sanctuary. He’s not as young or as nimble as he used to be but she doesn’t seem to mind it, or at least he doesn’t ever feel like he’s slowing her down. He watches their feet, still, dancing across the worn floorboards. He grins. It’s hard not to smile when they’re moving like this, all recklessness and throwing their weight around small spaces.

They drag each other around the kitchen. With the way they’re moving her bad leg hardly ever stays on the ground long enough to give out on her. It’s all in the momentum. She used to tell him stories about the dancing halls she went to, pre-war. A hundred people doing what they’re doing now, laughter filling the air, heavy fabric of dresses snapping and flowing. They had bands, back then, she’d said. He thinks while that would certainly be louder and clearer than the radios they have to work with now it isn’t necessarily better. There’s something to be said for the tinny, intimate sound of the coming out of the speakers.

She spins out, her arm flying out as counterbalance, a broad grin on her cheeks, her eyes shining. Hair flying, ink in water. She’s laughing, and Deacon’s laughing, and he’s not paying attention.

He trips, one foot going not quite where it needed to, sending him stumbling away from her and into the counter. He catches himself on it, breathing heavily and still grinning lopsided at her. She’s leaning on the opposite wall, a hand clamped over her mouth and worry clear as day in her eyes.

He’s touched, really.

“M fine,” he says, flashing a thumbs-up. He just needs to breathe for a minute, is all. Once it’s clear to her that he really is fine she laughs again, turning the volume on the radio way down. She sits down in the chair and rests her forehead on her hand. Her cheeks are flushed red, a smile still lingering on her face. Everything’s worth it, he thinks. Anything to keep her smiling. “Just give me a minute.”

“Oooh,” she sighs, stretching out her bad leg, wincing slightly as she bends down over it, stretching. She’s got a glint in her eye. “Sure you don’t need anything else? Water? A sit-down? Maybe a nap. What’d’ya think,” she pauses, watching him out of the corner of her eye, “ _Gramps_?”

He groans. Shouldn’t have given her shit for being 240 earlier, he thinks regretfully. He clutches at his chest in mock agony. He’s not _that_ old.

“Low blow,” he hisses. She laughs.

“Nah,” she says, pressing her mouth into the palm of her hand. Her hair’s falling wavy around her face, coming out of the bun it had been dragged into. He’s got an urge to cross the room, tuck it behind her ears, let his thumb run smooth over her cheek.

Oh.

He swallows, his mouth suddenly dry.

She keeps smiling, but her eyes turn serious, and Deacon makes himself stay exactly where he is. She tilts her gaze away from him, her free hand tracing whorls in the vinyl top of the table. She hums slightly and clears her throat.

“When Shaun was little,” she starts, her voice halting and slow. Deacon’s throat clenches – he wants to go over to her and pull the sadness from her body – he isn’t quite sure how. He is sure that it would be the opposite of a good idea for him to try. So instead he just listens. “The first couple of months, he was a very unhappy little boy. Just. Crying and crying and crying. The only thing N- the only thing we could ever figure out to calm him down was to uh, dance with him.”

She mimes holding a baby, her hands closer together than Deacon would think – the burden smaller than he would have imagined. Edith cradles it close to her chest, holds it close to her heart, and he feels like he should look away. Like he’s intruding on something private. She swallows. “You’d hold him like this. Just like this, real tight, and then you’d turn on the radio and you’d bounce around with him. He’d settle after that. You’d keep pacing around the living room, rocking the baby back and forth to,” she stops, choking on her words. She closes her eyes. “To all this old shit. As long as it took.”

She falls quiet. Doesn’t speak another peep, doesn’t open her eyes. Eventually, her hands fall away from the memory of her baby and settle on the vinyl of the table, palm up.

Deacon clears his throat.

“You were a good mother,” he says. He doesn’t know a whole lot about mothers – but goddamn, if there ever was one, it’d have been her. The best. He doesn’t know what else to say, is paralyzed by a fear that he’s said the wrong thing, paralyzed by the fear that he’s said the right thing.

Edith opens her eyes.

“Thank you,” she says.

 

 

ix.

This is dangerous business.

“Why are we here, boss?” he asks. It’s late, no light in the sky except the stars and the small amount that bleeds over from Goodneighbor. He tracks the constellations through the gaps in the roof, his head tipped back onto the mattress, and he can still smell smoke in his shirt from Bunker Hill, from the smoke breaks he’s taken in between. Cigarettes and funeral pyres are two very different kinds of sweet. He hears her shift behind him and he cranes his neck to look up at her.

She’s resting her cheek on her hand, starlight reflecting in her eyes, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette that’s almost burned entirely down to her fingertips. She sighs out smoke and he recognizes the smell of it – a gift from Garvey the last time they’d found themselves in Sanctuary.

She shrugs. Swallows and breathes in deep. Her eyes are more than a little glassy and distant when she says, “He’s my son.”

Simple. How can a thing be so clean and so messy at once?

He thinks he gets it. The running, at least, if not the family bit. So he rolls his shoulders and fumbles under the bed for his pack, pulls a bottle of bourbon out. It’s probably not top-shelf stuff but nothing really is after 200 something years. It’ll do. He uncorks it with his teeth and take a long pull from it before passing it up to her, wordless.

She covers her eyes with her hand and clears her throat. Stubs the last glowing ember of her cigarette out against the bedframe. She takes the bottle from him, takes a long, long drink. She’s silent for another long minute.

“Sturges will be the one to decode the holotape I sent north,” she says, a note of uncertainty in her voice. “It’ll take him another day, at least, and then-”

Deacon raises his arm up, effectively quieting her while he reaches for the bottle. “You don’t have to justify anything to me,” he says, and he means every word. She’s never had to excuses anything she’s ever done, not to him. Not even now, when he’s sure she’s still lying to him about _something_. It kills him to not know what, but he won’t push. They’re liars. They lie to everybody. It scares him more than he’d like to admit.

He doesn’t take it personally.

“I know,” she says, scrubbing her hand down her cheek before combing her hair away from her face. She drinks, and coughs lightly. “This is good, where’d you find it?”

He reaches for the bottle. “I uh, nabbed it from the Rexford a while back,” he says, swinging it lazily. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. Truth’s relative – he loves her as a friend, he wants her as a lover. He’ll feel nothing at all for her in the morning. The label’s been scrubbed clean off of the bottle.

“Sticky fingers, you,” she mutters. He nods, drinks again, keeps his face upturned to hers.

Deacon shrugs. “Learned from the best.”

She snorts out a laugh and goes quiet. “That’s a lie.” They pass the bottle between them. He’s more than a little drunk and half asleep when she speaks next. He almost misses it.

“We’ll only stay here for a little while,” she says, “Just a little while longer.”

He thinks he feels her fingers brush over his jawline, swears to god he feels the heat of them like a brand and he turns his face to it, drawn in like nothing else was ever so natural. Her fingers are pillowed firmly under her head.

He’s not disappointed.

 

 

 

f.

He catches the exact moment she sees him and watches as it runs up her spine, into her shoulders, as it stills her jumping leg for the barest of seconds. He’d raise a hand, smile, but she’s still chatting with the singer, her body turned towards her _just so_ , in that way that invites conversation and secret-sharing. Professional. He’s been in the business a while, he knows the tricks and tools, and he recognizes them, even with how slyly and subtly she works them.

He settles instead for letting his eyes slide across her, over the far wall. Raises the glass to his lips and mimes taking a drink. Grins a little and pretends to listen to the guy next to him as he bitches and moans about the new hole in his shack’s wall.

He’s still trying to figure out what kind of animal his new partner is. He’d have guessed she operated like Glory or worse, based on the intelligence and hearsay he’d gathered prior to their little pair-up. She’s been surprising as much as she’s been a headache-and-a-half. He’s halfway optimistic.

Doesn’t mean he doesn’t still sleep with a knife under his pillow when she takes watch. He raises his glass to his lips again, keeps his eyes vacant and nods when the guy next to him prompts him for a response. Hums a vague response, “Oh, you know…”

He’s not surprised when the guy falls silent, his body language going stiff and uncomfortable as he shifts subtly away. Makes his escape. Deacon eyes the ice left in his glass, spins it, and then he looks up. She’s standing there, her body language loose and open, eyes glazed like a woman with just enough drink in her. He’ll bet a hundred caps she hasn’t had a drink all evening, but then, neither has he.

She smiles like she’s greeting an old friend, not a practical stranger, and she laughs, loud and charismatic and barely forced. She reaches down and claps a hand over his shoulder, all cheer. She hauls him to his feet, and he forces himself to smile, to fold himself to her contact. She’s playing an angle here, and it’s the least he can do to play along.

He’s not exactly supposed to be here.

“Joey, it’s been months!” she slurs. She’s perfected her Drunk Voice, loud, but not intentionally so. “Goddamn, how the fuck _are_ you?”

Her grip is bruising. She steers them toward the stairs, her head ducked close to his as she chatters about nothing at all. His “friend” from before shoots him a sympathetic look that he catches on their way up and out of the Third Rail. He shrugs, listing to the side slightly under the weight his partner puts on his shoulder. Clever, making it look like he’s supporting her. The brace on her leg clicks in a way it never does when she’s actually walking and not playing a part.

She drops the act when they clear the second landing, lengthening and quickening her strides. Her grin is feral, bright, her grip on his shoulder still crushing. She tosses Ham a bag of caps on her way back and winks. Ham pockets it, keeping his gaze locked firmly on the ceiling.

The night air is biting – it might actually snow this season, he thinks – and then he doesn’t think much else in that vein because she drags him into an alley and slams him up against a wall, boxing him in. It would be intimidating even if she was a smaller woman, but she’s his height on a good day with twice the muscle and she’s got a _phenomenal_ mean streak and the face to go with it. Fury personified.

He really shouldn’t have followed her here.

He holds his palms up and out, conciliatory. “Look,” he says, “I can explain.”

She tilts her head to the side, nods. “Okay,” she says, “Explain.”

He really, really shouldn’t have followed her here. She’s got the ice-cold thousand-yard stare and the shotgun over her shoulder to back it up and he should’ve just let her handle her half of the mission. He breathes in sharp, and he’s not scared, not honestly, but he’s in deep shit and he doesn’t think she’ll buy any bullshit from him tonight.

So, truth it is. He smiles, says, “I’m going to put my glasses back on, first.”

She blinks, dead eyed. He takes that as permission, reaches into his coat and pulls out his shades. Slips them on and breathes a slight sigh of relief.

“Explain,” she prompts again, an edge creeping into her voice. She’s gonna start tapping her foot, and then she’s going to start twitching toward her guns.

He might not _know_ her, but he’s seen her irritated before. Frankly, it’s a miracle he hasn’t been on the receiving end of it till now.

He swallows. “It’s that I don’t trust you.”

She stares at him. For a long, long minute, he thinks that the soft underside of his chin and the barrel of her shotgun are going to get very acquainted. This close to her he can read the chicken-scratch on the stock: _Mercy_.

She laughs, sharp as broken glass, ducking her chin to her chest. “Oh, wow,” she says, finally releasing his shoulder and stepping back. He drags in a greedy breath, like she’d had a grip around his throat instead of on his arm. That’ll definitely bruise. “Wow, okay. I don’t trust you either, for what it’s worth.”

He rolls his shoulder, grimacing. “Sorry,” he says, “For what it’s worth.”

She leans against the wall opposite him, her arms crossed across her chest, humor still sparkling in her eyes. It does amazing things to the severe cut of her features. Might be the softening power of the streetlamps, though, or the lateness of the hour. Maybe he did manage to drink some of his whiskey.

“Jackshit,” she says, and sighs, “I can’t do my job if you’re constantly tailing me.”

He shoves his hand in his coat pocket, pulls out a pack of cigarettes. “I know,” he says, shaking one out into his palm, then another. He holds one out, a peace offering.

She’s quiet while they light up, and for the next while, the two of them breathing smoke out into the cold air.

“Mags is definitely in someone’s pocket,” she says finally, quietly, “It’s almost lazy, how obvious it is.”

Deacon hums, holding the smoke in his lungs before exhaling through his nose. He prefers fresher cigarettes than these, most of the time, but beggars can’t be choosers.

“’Someone’ being our mutual enemy?” he asks, innocent as you please.

“Maybe.” She blows a smoke ring up toward the night sky, then another. She combs her fingers through her hair, twists it back behind her ear. She rolls her head and he can hear her neck popping while she stretches. “She doesn’t know anything about our girl, though,” she says, exhaustion creeping into her voice. She levels her eyes at him, resting the back of her head against the brick wall behind her.

“Mm,” Deacon says, regarding the cigarette. The cherry of hers glows red in the dim: bright, bright, bright. Turns her eyes to black. He stubs out his, sighs.

“Bummer,” he says.

 

 

 

x.

The road to Hangman’s Alley is clear, and they reach the bustling settlement around midmorning. Garvey and Valentine are there to greet them, Edith having radioed ahead.

Deacon knows what’s coming, but it still stings.

“You should go back to HQ,” she says, pulling him to the side, her shoulder pressed to his, “Tell Desdemona what’s going on.”

He swallows. She’s right, of course. He’s got a job to do, and so does she. As much as he trusts Garvey and Nick to get her north safely, he’d rather be with her for what’s coming, but there’s no arguing with her once she’s got an idea in her head.

Still, he’s always been a contrary bastard.

“Are you sure?” he asks, his mouth dry, hoping to god to change her mind. He reaches out, lets his fingers brush, just barely, over the leather of her coat. He’s got a stone in his throat. Her smile wavers.

She clears her throat, and then very, very carefully rests her head on his shoulder. _I’m not the hugging type_ , he’d said, sitting next to her in the dark, what feels like years ago now. This isn’t hugging. Not quite. “Nah, But I have to do this,” she stops, breathing in. Closes her eyes, and continues quieter, “I’m going to have to kill my son, Deacon. I – have to do it alone. I’m sorry.”

He leans his head back, watches the clouds race across the sky. _You’d hold him just like this. As long as it took._ Her shoulder’s warm against his, her cheekbone digging into his shoulder. He feels like he can’t breathe.

“Nothing to be sorry for,” he says. She huffs a laugh. He feels something great and cavernous open up inside his chest.

This would be a good time to kiss her, he thinks. He thinks that she might even let him.

He won’t.

“ _Kid_ ,” Valentine shouts from the gates. Preston waves, when he looks.

“Come on, we should get moving,” he says.

“Time to go,” she sighs. _I’m going to have to kill my son_.

Edith pulls away, leaving him cold all along his side. She smiles at him, an embarrassed, tired little grin that he mirrors.

“See you around, stranger,” she says, hoisting her pack up onto her shoulders. He should ask, _are you going to be okay?_ Instead he laughs, lets her walk.

He’s never been good at this. The hole in his chest yawns wider, wider, wider, and he’s terrified, suddenly.

“Hey,” he raises his voice, holding out his hand. She turns, shielding her eyes from the sun. He swallows, waves, and says, “Next time I see you, let me buy you a drink.”

She smiles like the sun rising and laughs.

 _As long as it took_.

They’re going to be okay.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This story was an absolute blast to work on, boy oh boy. My artist was the lovely, lovely deedippe, whom you can find on tumblr, and who was absolutely phenomenal and very talented and also had the patience of a saint. What a trooper. Kisses, dude! 
> 
> This story was the first I've written for Fallout, but it probably won't be the last. I'm definitely planning on writing more so! That's cool, right? 
> 
> I'm tumblr-user seaborgois, hit me up! I'm always down to talk. Cheers, all!


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